1. Field
The present application relates generally to the operation and design of analog front ends, and more particularly, to the operation and design of concurrent matching networks for use in analog front ends.
2. Background
Wireless devices have become increasing more complex resulting in more circuitry being incorporated onto smaller chips and circuit boards. Sharing an antenna between transmit and receive signal paths is the common way to reduce the total pin number in a system-on-chip environment. However, at millimeter (MM) wave frequencies; this may result in additional loss resulting from any switches that are used to share the antenna between the signal paths. One way to solve this problem is to use a two chip solution; one chip for receive operations and one chip for transmit operations. However, a two chip solution may not be possible due to the space constraints of the device. It is also possible to use a conventional power combiner/splitter to share the antenna. However, combiner/splitters typically insert about 3 dB of loss, which may be unacceptable.
Accordingly, what is needed is a mechanism to share an antenna that eliminates switch loss and that avoids using a two chip solution so as to reduce space requirements.